Cash for honours: Key document names Levy

Lord Levy was the subject of the recent email that the police issued an injunction to prevent the BBC from revealing.

An email between two of Tony Blair's closest aides and linked to the cash-for-honours investigation focused on Labour's chief fundraiser, Lord Levy, the BBC said last night.

The news raised speculation at Westminster that Lord Levy could be questioned again by police about the alleged cover-up. He was rearrested in January on suspicion of perverting the course of justice.

The BBC was barred from revealing the contents of the email as a result of an injunction. However, last night they said the email between No 10 aide Ruth Turner and Mr Blair's chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, discussed Lord Levy.

The email is reported to discuss whether or not Lord Levy asked Ruth Turner to change the evidence she was about to give to the police, which is why the enquiry changed from an investigation into cash for honours into an investigation into perverting the course of justice.

Police have been investigating whether Ruth Turner, the prime minister's director of external relations, was being asked by Lord Levy to modify information that might have been of interest to the inquiry. Officers have been trying to piece together details of a meeting they had last year. Ms Turner gave an account of it to her lawyers and this has been passed to police.

During the inquiry both have been arrested and interviewed on suspicion of trying to pervert the course of justice, which is an imprisonable offence.

Their meeting is understood to have taken place in the summer, at the start of the police inquiry.

Sources have said the two had a difficult conversation. The police are attempting to establish whether this could be interpreted as Lord Levy having asked Ms Turner to adjust the evidence she was preparing to give the Metropolitan Police, whose inquiry has led to senior members of Downing Street staff - including the prime minister, Tony Blair - being questioned by detectives.

The Guardian does not know in what way evidence was to be adjusted, or indeed if he asked her to do so in any significant way.

The BBC said yesterday that Ms Turner sent an email to the chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, but other sources available to the Guardian suggest there was no such email.

Iain Dale is saying that it is a document that the police are investigating rather than an email.

However, this confusion might be best explained by The Daily Telegraph's take on this, where they claim:

In a new twist, The Daily Telegraph has discovered that Miss Turner never sent the email to Jonathan Powell, the No 10 chief of staff, because she feared it would be damaging if it fell into the wrong hands.

The message, which has become a critical part of the police investigation into whether there has been a cover-up at Downing Street, was addressed by Miss Turner to Jonathan Powell, the No 10 chief of staff, and the Prime Minister's longest serving aide.

Even though it was never sent, the police examination of the Downing Street computers picked it up.

Number Ten are denying leaking this information to the BBC, although the very fact that this now turns up in the hands of The Guardian certainly raises suspicions.

It is also helpful to the government that the investigation has moved away from the question of Cash for Honours and on to perversion of the course of justice and is this involves individual rather than collective responsibility.

Is Levy being hung out to dry?

By which I mean, if there was an attempt to pervert the course of justice, doesn't that strengthen the claim that there was something to hide in the first place? Like selling honours for cash?

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Tags: Cash for Honours, Lord Levy, Ruth Turner, Tony Blair